by H. R. Romero
“Shaw wants to kill them all… not just the Turned, but the children too, all of them!” Valentine says, almost as if she’s pleading for the major’s help. And she is.
Connors saunters to the window, spreading dust-caked curtains, he stares out, and says nothing, before stroking his face, from forehead to chin with both palms. “And he should. We should. I approve. His actions justify the means to an end. They need to all die, and the sooner, the better.
Shaw steps forward, speaking in defense of keeping the subjects alive, for now, long enough to find a solution to wiping out evil in one fell swoop. “Major, we can’t euthanize them right now. They need to be studied further. We must develop a weapon that can deal with the issue at hand, on a grand scale, once and for all.”
Shaw brings Connors up to speed on the parasite he found burrowed into Lily’s brain, looking all the world like a cabbage with legs. “It’s certainly the very same creature that most likely resides inside the braincase of all the subjects, of that I have zero doubt. It’s an alien lifeform for Christ’s sake. Can you believe it?”
Dr. Valentine has found a chair, and she’s draped over it looking nauseous and tossing, Shaw nasty stares while he babbles.
“I don’t know how to destroy it. I mean sure, I can eventually kill it, I’m sure, but not all of them, and not all at once, and that’s the goal. Taking those things out of commission one at a time isn’t at all effective nor is it efficient. No, what we need is someone who knows something about parasites or, God, I don’t know… plants. A Horticulturalist perhaps. Then maybe we might have a chance to gain the upper hand and set things right.”
Connors calls, over his radio, and a few moments later a soldier jogs into the office. “Get over to communications and tell, Airwave, to send out a call to any active base. We are looking for a…” Connors snaps his fingers at, Shaw.
“Parasitologist,” says Shaw.
“…or… a…,” Connors snaps again.
“Horticulturalist,” says Shaw.
Connors lifts his eyes towards Shaw. Getting a nod from the man, he sends the soldier off to deliver the order.
Dr. Valentine remains quite defiant, her arms crossed. She’s scowling, dejected, and furious. Shaw is puffed up like a toad and beaming like a kid on Christmas day.
He reaches into his pack to withdraw the specimen container. What he’s collected from the parking garage is still packed safely inside. He places it on the desk. “What do you make of these?”
“Is that? Is that what I think they are?” Dr. Valentine asks.
“Oh my god. Those are,” Shaw’s expression is one of confusion and disbelief, “those are eggs.” He takes the jar from the desk, turning it in his hand so that the blackened shells clunk against the inside gently.
“What are these from?” says Dr. Valentine, as much in awe as Shaw.
“A Wicked Briar. Did you know they could do this?” says Connors.
Shaw shakes his head, no.
Dr. Valentine takes the jar from him and inspects the contents carefully. “They’re dead.” She opens the lid and pokes one of the eggs with a pencil tip. It breaks apart like ash.
Shaw looks disappointed. Maybe he was hoping he could have hatched one. “They’re trying to create offspring. I’ve never seen any Turned do this before. This is completely new, but not entirely unexpected.”
Dr. Valentine, placing the lid back on the jar, gives it a little shake, and the rest of the contents turn to a pile of black dust and settle on the bottom. “Lucky for us looks like something’s gone wrong, at least with the clutch.”
“This was just a few of what it had,” Connors says, “There were hundreds just like these. All black and dried up.”
“let’s hope they don’t perfect the art of breeding,” says Dr. Valentine.
“Doctor Shaw, I’d like to take a gander at what you found in that brain. I want to see it, right now.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.”
-Alfonso X, King of Castile
The call’s gone out from Camp Able, as Major Connors ordered, to any base that’s still communications capable.
Camp Able, over the years, has lost contact from Camp Kane, in San Marcos, Texas; Camp Able’s sister camp. Camp Kane had been overrun and gutted by the Turned. Forty-seven fighting men and women. Nothing left but their skins hanging and drying like leather, from the ramparts, waving in the wind, like flags of defeat.
At one-time transmissions were sent back and forth from Kane and Able, nearly every day. Kane was meant to be a temporary base, originally set up as an evac point That was earlier, when the first death rattles of the world first began to ooze from the open cracks of the Earth. Kane, like Able, had been a home for soldiers and refugees alike.
Besides, Camp Kane, nobody knows how many bases are still in operation. That insignificant base might as well be located on the surface of the moon. Gone are the days when Kane responded to Camp Able’s transmissions, and except for a faint, static-laden signal the air’s been transmission free.
Some believe the defenses of Kane’s walls have been lofted ever higher since those first days, and if there’s anyone still alive there, then the gates are barricaded, self-survival becoming the trend.
The call Airwave placed a few short hours ago was different, because it triggered a response. But Kane had no one on base who studied parasites; Earth-born, or otherwise. And as it turned out Kane’s doctor had his hands full fighting off a severe sickness infecting the base. The radio operator made it clear that outside contact was unwelcome but promised to relay Able’s request down the pipe.
Nothing more than white noise hissed through the lonely speaker for days, until a disconnected whisper grows into a coherent string of information. Airwave, glued to a metal folding chair, frantically makes notes, taking them down in shorthand. He sometimes talks to himself and sometimes answers himself and sometimes tells himself jokes, only he laughs at. He’s been manning the radio in a lonely little boot devoid of quality human interaction for too long.
The pasty-skinned man nearly chokes on a hard biscuit. Washing down the lodge lump of dough with cold coffee, he sputters and responds to the message. Licking away the taste of bitter caffeine from his lips, he runs across the yard and the parade grounds, looking all the world like a chicken running for cover, before the major notices him, and moves to engage him, head on.
“Report, private,” says Connors. There is excitement on the young man’s face, and his body language shows something is brewing. Connors can feel the anxiety tightening his chest.
Out of breath, Airwave inhales deeply and tries again to talk, but he’s too winded. Instead, he hands the major the message.
Connors reads it silently to himself. His lips move silently as he scans each line. He crumbles the sheet of paper in his fist and hands the balled-up note to Airwave. “Thank you, that will be all, private.”
Weapons fire. The Connors and Airwave instinctively fall to the ground, where their reflexes drive them. Both place their dominant hands on their side arms and draw them.
The shots are coming from the southern entrance of the base. Another round of mixed-arms fire, followed by random shouting, raise Major Connors’s hackles. The weapon fire ceases, and he believes whatever transpired over at the south entrance has been taken care of. Until a steady eruption of gunpowder rises near the south gate in pale grey clouds of burning stink.
Men are running in every direction. A soldier stumbles around the corner of a steel-sided outbuilding. Catching sight of the major, he shouts, “Wicked Briars… the south gate.” He’s using his hands to wave Connors toward the south gate. The soldier is frantic. His movements are over-animated, a tell-tale sign that the man has probably soiled his fatigues.
Connors rallies men to the south gate, with raucous calls for support. At breakneck speed, he runs toward the fray, catching himse
lf before he stumbles and falls over his tired feet.
More shooting, this time from the western side of the base. This stops the major in his tracks. The enemy is encroaching on two sides of the base. This is no coincidence. This is a planned maneuver. The Turned have shown up for a battle in impressive numbers. The perimeter of the camp is crawling with monsters.
Wicked Briars close in on the fortification and tear away at the walls, post by post, brick, by brick, and fence panel by fence panel, but soon, seeing that this is far too much work resort to vomiting acid. The goo the beasts spout onto the thick fences causes them melt, like silver wax placed too close to a flickering flame, dripping to the ground in steaming pools of heated slag.
A pack of what some of the enlisted men call Hobbles; oddly random variations of half-human, half-beast, scamper purposefully on their path through the lines of Wicked Briars. You don’t see many Hobbles. They are few and far between, easy to pick off, and more of a hindrance than an actual threat unless they get you down. Then it’s curtains for you. The things weave through the Wicked Briars like hunting foxes through tall grass, sleek and graceful, but blood-thirsty and skillful in the kill. They are hungry and salivate, foaming at the thought of gnawing Man flesh to the bone and deep into the marrow within.
Fight as they do, the soldiers are hopeless to match the sheer numbers near indomitability of the enemy foe. Airwave is lost to a blast of acid splashing over a wall. It came from nowhere. Connors barely missed being doused in the flesh-melting concoction.
Connors could hear the cries and random shouting all over the base, but one catches his attention.
“Major!”
It’s Hollander. “The base is lost. We’ve to get the hell out of here.”
The major cries out to the closest tower to sound the evacuation signal. The base has been overtaken. Hollander is correct; to stay and fight would be folly.
An errant shell is lobbed intended for a matter of great lethality but goes astray. The two men dive for cover, covering their heads from the noise and explosion to come. It spears the hospital building rending it open, directly down the center, like a butchered cow. The principal portion of the structure is destroyed, most notably, the cells of research subjects. Smoldering chunks of the building lay in pyramids of dust-shrouded rocks. Dust billows in fluffed curtains of brown and gray ash, choking out the sunlight. Calls and cries well up, and outward, from the broken wreckage and tangles of demolished inner-structure.
Dr. Valentine clears away the tangles of clotted wire, and shards of concrete, from where they have been strewn around the remains of the hospital. More than a few of the children have been killed by the falling debris. Tiny bodies lay twisted and dispersed across a wide area.
“Rose!” Dr. Valentine calls, “Rose!”
She throws planks of wood and debris out of her path. She spots movement to her left. A small hand. She reaches down to grab the small, blood splattered hand. It’s clawing out aimlessly. The palm is coated with small silvery hairs dotted on the ends with cloudy, yellow fluid.
“Stop! Valentine!” A muffled and raspy voice calls out, barely reaching her in all the uproar.
She takes notice just in time. It’s amazing that he caught her attention at all. She scans the debris until she finds the little hand again, poking out at her. And it’s clear to her, it’s not Rose’s hand, but the hand of another child. Nettle’s hands are a symbolic prelude to a painful and potentially deadly sting. She shudders. She’s the only child with this ability that Dr. Valentine knows of, thank God. She would have to be more careful, now that all the safety measures have been undone. She almost bought the farm, but there’s no time to be embarrassed for being so stupid.
“Nettle, it’s me, Dr. Valentine I’ll help you,” she says.
She shoves herself against a solid block of concrete, but the portion of the wall that is pinning the girl down is much too heavy for her to lift. She calls to a soldier as he’s running past. She calls to him for assistance, but he’s much too busy pissing himself to lend a hand, and he keeps right on running to wherever he was going before she called to him.
A long pipe lies not far from her. She collects it. Even though it’s kinked and warped, it’s the straightest, longest piece she can find. There’re plenty of concrete blocks scattered around to serve as a fulcrum.
After she rolls a large stone into place. A muscle in her lower back screams out in agony. She forces one end of the pipe under the wall and pulls downward. The busted wall, pinning Nettle beneath it, budges a little, but she can’t hold for very long. She’s not strong enough, and she’s soon forced to lower it back to the ground. She does it as slowly as she can so as not to crush Nettle’s skinny body beneath it.
Sweat pours from her filthy, grime-sheathed face. Her breaths come in groans and gasps. She’s mumbling to herself about how she can’t help the thing tramped under the rubble. Why had she said the “thing,” of course, she’s a child. That’s what she meant. She’s trying to fight away the thought that trying to free Nettle is hopeless. But she’s right, she can’t do it alone. She tries to lift it again, but she hemorrhages strength, and her will falters.
Something grabs her by the shoulder and pulls her violently away from where she’s standing. Times up. The wicked Briars have found me. Terrified her eyes move up to look death in its triumphant face, but finds only Shaw’s blue, bloodshot eyes drilling into her.
“Please, help me.” She stumbles, losing her grip on the pipe. Her waning strength makes her feel awkward and displaced and dizzy.
Shaw needs not to be asked again. The answer he’s been desperate to find most likely resides inside the heads of the subjects, of which not many have survived the collapse of the building. If they’re leaving Camp Able, at least one of these abominations must be brought along with them. He pries with the lever, and the wall raises, much higher than when Dr. Valentine tried to lift it.
Dr. Valentine scrambles part-way under the wall so she can reach Nettle, carefully avoiding a touch from her hands, she grabs the child’s hospital gown and drags her out from underneath.
Shaw lowers the back-breaking burden that he’s struggling to hold. It crashes down quickly. Nettle’s feet barely clear the heavy, bone-breaking block. A cloud of this dust thickens the air as the ruins settle.
“Here, quick, wrap her hands up in this,” says Shaw. He throws Dr. Valentine a handkerchief from his pocket, and a discarded oil rag he picks up from the debris field. He tells her to wrap those hands good and tight and do be extra careful doing it.
A small voice is calling to her. It’s a hoarse, choking whisper, coming from a cascading mountain of rock and smoldering, splintered furniture.
“Rose! She’s there,” Dr. Valentine points to the pile of wreckage she thinks is where the child called to her from. “Oh, God, She’s alive. Help me.”
“We have all we need,” says Shaw. “Just the one… We have to get out of here.”
“No!” says Dr. Valentine, already trying to get to Rose. “We aren’t leaving her to die here. We aren’t going to do that!”
Shaw bends down to speak to Nettle and warns her not to try anything stupid, “Stay here and don’t you dare move. Do you understand? If you move, you’re as good as dead.”
Nettle, other than bloody and dirty, appears unshaken or seriously injured, and if Shaw didn’t know any better, she’d look as normal as any seven-year-old could. She nods her head, confirming that she’ll stay where she is and not try anything stupid.
“You’re dumber than I give you credit for. Look around you. If we don’t get out of here, we’re dead.” His words aren’t stopping Dr. Valentine from moving the pile of concrete from where she’s trying to dig out, R – Zero – Five – E. He takes up the pry-pole again and shakes away his impatience. “This is the last one I’m helping to save, and then I’m leaving with or without you. And, I’m taking that one,” he points to Nettle.
Rose’s hands are bruised scraped. She’s reaching
out from under a great wooden beam pockmarked with rusty nails, pleading for help. The concrete avalanche and wood cover the rest of her body, concealing it from view.
Dr. Valentine keels down, on her knees, to hold her hands. Shaw warns her to be careful and not to touch her. She doesn’t care what he has to say, she’ll do as she pleases, even though she knows he’s right. Skin-to-skin contact is forbidden, unless under the strictest scientific standards in a controlled environment, and under the watchful eye of an armed guard. All of which all in the process of trying to avoid death.
“I have to pull her out when you lift with the pole. Now shut up and lift already,” says Dr. Valentine.
The Hobbles are doing what they do best and living up to their namesake. The squat creatures, looking all the world like long-legged devil crabs, with human eyes of every color, placed on stumpy eye-stalks, are loping after fleeing soldiers, grabbing them around the legs and tying them up, with a stringy substance which they exude from spinnerets near there rear ends, so that the Wicked Briars can more easily dispatch them.
They’re getting closer. Dr. Valentine can tell it, without having to see it. The screams of the men and women prove the Turned are drawing ever nearer. She grabs onto Rose’s wrists, ready to pull her free, she takes an opportunity to look over her shoulder. Yes, they are getting close. A group of five Wicked Briars is barreling down on them from multiple directions. Zeroing in on their frantic activity to save Nettle and Rose.
“Nettle come stand closer to us.” Says Shaw. “Hurry, Merna. We don’t have much time.” He groans under the weight of the wood beam pinning Rose down. The bulk of the pile is bending the pole in the middle, where it was kinked during the explosion. He readjusts his grip and pushes downward with everything he has left in him.